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Saturday, 23 January 2016

Google, RailTel's Free Public Wi-Fi Service Launched at Mumbai Central

Indian Railways, RailTel and Google India on Friday announced the availability of free high-speed public Wi-Fi service at the Mumbai Central station. “The Wi-Fi will be entirely free to start and the long-term goal will be making this self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and places, with RailTel and other partners, in the future,” said Google.

They also said that it will expand the free public Wi-Fi network to 100 of the busiest railway stations in India by the end of this year, and eventually expand to 400 railway stations. Next in line are stations in Allahabad, Patna, Jaipur, and Ranchi. “Also, to make sure that a few people spending all day in the station downloading lots of big files don’t slow down the network for everyone, users might notice a drop in speed after their first hour on the network. Most people should still be able to do the things they’ll want to do online,” added Google.

To access the internet, all you need to do is

Visit the Wi-Fi Settings of their smartphone, and select the RailWire network.

Open your mobile browser, and then navigate to railwire.co.in.

On the RailWire website, users will be prompted to their phone number on the Wi-Fi login screen, and then press Receive SMS.

Users will receive an SMS message with a 4-digit OTP (one-time password) code, and they will then have to enter the code at the Wi-Fi login screen, and click Done.

You will see a checkmark and will be connected.

Commenting on the launch, Chairman and Managing Director of RailTel Shri R. K. Bahuguna said, "Our intent was to fulfil Indian Railway's vision of providing Railway passengers access to high speed Internet through our optical fibre communication network. Affordable smartphones have made it possible for the common men to experience the power of Internet. With our partnership with Google, we are very confident of rolling out a robust, scalable service at Railway stations in the near future."

Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia and India said, "We're delighted to launch India's first high speed public Wi-Fi service in partnership with Indian Railways. Bringing affordable Internet access to millions of people is an important part of making the Internet both easily accessible and useful for more than 300 million Indians who are already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not. By end of this year over 10 million people will be able to enjoy this experience at 100 stations spread across the country. I would like to thank the Indian Railways for their support and vision to provide a world class high speed public Wi-Fi network at the stations."

Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India said, "We've focused on delivering a network that is at par with the high speed public Wi-Fi network that is available to users in developed countries. The network is built for wide coverage and high capacity usage unlike a typical Wi-Fi hotspot which offers connectivity in limited area and poor experience. This network will extend to cover both long distance train station and the local train station in Mumbai Central. The next four stations we'll bring online will be Allahabad, Patna, Jaipur and Ranchi and others will follow very shortly."